Redcar Steelworks

Iron and steelmaking was a core industry of the northeast for decades, with a ready supply of local ore being available to feed the furnaces. From the early 1850's, Middlesbrough became a centre of iron production, with at least 90 furnaces in use in the area by the 1870's, but with the introduction of the Bessemer process, steel production took over.

The industry slowly consolidated, first with Dorman Long taking over many plants, and then with nationalistaion British Steel reduced the size of the industry. British Steel built the Redcar blast furnace in 1979, and at the time it was the largest blast furnace in Europe, capable of producing 10,000 tons of iron a day. This fed the nearby Lackenby works to be turned into 3.3m tons of steel a year.

In 1999, British Steel merged with Hoogovens to form Corus, and in 2006, Tata of India took over the Redcar plant. The plant was not aking money so it was mothballed, and in 2011, Sahavirya Steel Industries (SSI) of Thailand took over, restarted the blast furnace, but in 2015 they too closed the plant, this time permanently. The blast furnace, still the second largest in Europe, was extinguished forever.

I visited the area several times between 2009 and 2022, photographing the site when it was active, derelict and under demolition. My last visit in November 2022 was just two days before the explosive demolition of the furnace, and so closing the story of the place for me.